Monsanto

fwiw if seeds are sterile, they're not exactly going to cross-pollinate by definition

The only possibility would be test plots or fields grown for seed were within range of normal plots, and that's still pretty unlikely. Then again, Monsanto is aggressive enough they might try to sue you for sterilizing your field, lol.

I still think terminator traits are dumb, but... I dunno, I'm not going to post about it while at work since I work for a M0nsanto c0mpetitor.

For what its worth, Monsanto floated the idea of terminator seeds and then rapidly backed down after the public uproar. In a number of big markets (India, Brazil) they're outlawed.

Generally, I prefer organic (particularly on foods like berries and bell-peppers that are very liberally doused with pesticides). But I find some GMOs fine. I don't have much of a problem with adding genes for better nutrition, drought resistance or glyphosate (Roundup's generic name) tolerance, the latter just an enzyme and like all the others it gets digested. Other, more persistent herbicides were (and remain) way more damaging. I am wary of the Bt toxin gene. Organic vegetables are often dusted with Bacillus thuringiensis, but at least you have the option of washing off their Bt toxin before it does things like:

Once activated, the endotoxin binds to the gut epithelium and causes cell lysis by the formation of cation-selective channels, which leads to death. (to insects)

-So, I'm a bit ambivalent on the technology. Where it reduces the use of persistent organic pollutants its potentially a good thing, especially in the developing world.-Consumers definitely have the right to be informed. Give the GMO plants brand names (rather than Agrisure 3000GT quad stack etc.) and label the corn cobs or potatos as fruit presently are. -Where I have a huge, huge problem with Monsanto (and to a lesser extent, Syngenta and Dow) is their monopolistic dominance of seed distribution through buyouts in nations with poorly enforced anti-trust law, and intimidation of farmers who choose traditional practices like seed-cleaning and saving. This is especially a problem in developing nations. There are a lot of local NGO's doing great work opposing Monsanto overreach and supporting seed-saving (an endangered practice in the U.S.).

Thanks for your take on that Sanpaku. I was unfairly rude to u on the oil spill thread (i.e. apologies) but I agree w/most of yr perspective on this... especially the critical seed-saving aspect. I live in an activist bubble but from my skewed POV ppl have been ragging on Monsanto nonstop for the last ten years.

The only possibility would be test plots or fields grown for seed were within range of normal plots, and that's still pretty unlikely.

This has happened a lot, actually - in one case Monsanto sued the farmer whose crops were contaminated for "stealing" their patented genetics.

fwiw if seeds are sterile, they're not exactly going to cross-pollinate by definition

But the POLLEN is what cross-pollinates, ie sterile crops cross-pollinate with non-Monsanto crops, turning them into sterile Monsanto crops, which are then legally owned by Monsanto, even though the farmer never planted Monsanto crops

once these things are deregulated, bees & wind will carry them. & Monsanto is already legendary for suing farmers who've never purchased Monsanto seeds for growing their own saved seeds that had become contaminated by their patented, genetically modified seeds. they have patented a food variant that kills off the non-patented version of itself.

glad to hear a word from Sanpaku or anywhere that they've backed down from Terminator seeds - I've been searching for evidence that it was or was not in these seeds, and couldn't find anything either way. that was one of those examples of corporate greed trumping human welfare that was almost beyond imagination.

There's an online pdf paper called 'What Is Wrong with Round Up Ready Alfalfa' that makes a good point: countryside weed variants of Alfalfa that are pesticide resistant are likely to spread everywhere.

Monsanto fills me with disgust (probably literally sometimes, if i'm eating shitty food). the farmer sleeve references is a canadian - percy schmeiser - he fought for years and finally won a relatively small settlement - http://www.percyschmeiser.com/

as a teenage reader of lol adbusters i remember monsanto being one of their biggest boogeymen but i have some ~issues~ w/ a lot of the rhetoric around 'industrialzed agriculture' & how & who determines what food is the most 'natural'. its a tough, weird issue in that i think ppl (myself certainly included) get caught up in signifiers & sorta culture debates, which ends up sidelining some of the broader policy stuff

it was p lol tho to read atul gawande give the dept. of agriculture as a model for reorganizing the health care system

a lot of the rhetoric around 'industrialzed agriculture' & how & who determines what food is the most 'natural'

there was an essay i remember reading in one of those alt-collections from the 90s (i think) - either Apocalypse Culture or Amok Journal or something like that - about how the invention of agriculture ruined human society. does anyone else know of this?

I'm curious to know what my dad would think of this thread. He comes from a family that has traditionally been and, for the most part, still is mostly farmers. He's always been a big supporter of small farmers and getting involved in causes to support local farmers. He also spend the majority of my childhood selling Monsanto products to many of the same farmers. He doesn't do that anymore, but it would be interesting to hear his thoughts. My knee-jerk reaction, knowing as little about this as I do, is to obviously hate on Monsanto. But I also know that without them, my family might not as regularly had food on the table when I was growing up.

I appreciated Sanpaku's post upthread about how they backed down on Terminator after the uproar & how they're now illegal in India & Brazil, but they are illegal there now only in response to this:

Diminished yields, health problems and weakened prospects to buy the next season's seeds in consequence of and combined with that binding contract with Monsanto have driven many rural farmers to poverty, and subsequently led to a rash of farmer suicides in rural India. Since 1997, more than 182,936 Indian farmers have committed suicide, according to a recent study by the National Crime Records Bureau. "As seed saving is prevented by patents as well as by the engineering of seeds with non-renewable traits, seed has to be bought for every planting season by poor peasants. A free resource available on farms became a commodity which farmers were forced to buy every year. This increases poverty and leads to indebtedness. As debts increase and become unpayable, farmers are compelled to sell kidneys or even commit suicide," Indian author Vandana Shiva noted in her 2004 article "The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation."

I don't mean to sound like a Luddite, really don't, so I'm all for Jeff or the other posters working for GMO companies starting more of a pushback instead of me just compiling the tired old arguments. Would simply love to hear conversation on this subject in more places in general, really.

Michael Hart, a conventional livestock family farmer, has been farming in Cornwall for nearly thirty years and has actively campaigned on behalf of family farmers for over fifteen years, travelling extensively in Europe, India, Canada and the USA.

In this short documentary he investigates the reality of farming genetically modified crops in the USA ten years after their introduction. He travels across the US interviewing farmers and other specialists about their experiences of growing GM

"Chinese researchers have found small pieces of ribonucleic acid (RNA) in the blood and organs of humans who eat rice. The Nanjing University-based team showed that this genetic material will bind to proteins in human liver cells and influence the uptake of cholesterol from the blood."

I sympathize with that scientist's frustration with the bad analogies and the way it blows an unsubstantiated fear into what reads like a factual headline. It's fear-mongering and not completely rational.

So, nothing has been proven by this article in terms of danger. But her metaphor that this study is simply 'opening a door' for other people to follow up on doesn't rest well either -- the entire reason why most of the article isn't devoted to the study, but to underlining Monsanto's reliance on substantial equivalence to evade FDA testing, is to suggest that this open door complicates the entire concept of 'substantial equivalence'? I admittedly don't understand all the science, and I appreciate you sending these linked rebuttals -- anti-Monsanto sentiment is too often just sentimental horror at the idea of food being tampered with, but one can find plenty of reasons not to trust them

Honestly, as much as I'd like to, it's really hard to defend many of the actions of Monsanto. They have made some great breakthroughs in ag science, but like many people have mentioned, the dubious business practices certainly have tainted that. I know there are many well meaning scientists that work for them, that are true interested in the betterment of agriculture, but don't agree with the business practices. It sucks that Monsanto is the biggest game in town and are the only ones with the massive amount of money to throw at R&D. And they are the only ones with enough money to deal with all the regulation of the R&D of genetically engineered plants. Some argue that deregulation is the best way to combat this, because the little guys just can't deal with it (I know wacky idea, and not one I entirely agree with).

You're right with your last point about the anti-Monsanto sentiment and it's that sentiment that drives me nutso. People treat food as sacred and think that the alteration of it seems intrinsically wrong.

well -- I am certainly up for this research being done. but if there's anything should be treated as sacred, it is food. the scientists I talk to usually understand the depth of what they're doing, and the managers who risk-assess QA of their work under profit constraints usually don't

-* Headquartered near St. Louis, Missouri, the Monsanto Chemical Company was founded in 1901. Monsanto became a leading manufacturer of sulfuric acid and other industrial chemicals in the 1920s. In the 1930s, Monsanto began producing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). PCBs, widely used as lubricants, hydraulic fluids, cutting oils, waterproof coatings and liquid sealants, are potent carcinogens and have been implicated in reproductive, developmental and immune system disorders.

The world’s center of PCB manufacturing was Monsanto’s plant on the outskirts of East St. Louis, Illinois, which has the highest rate of fetal death and immature births in the state. By 1982, nearby Times Beach, Missouri, was found to be so thoroughly contaminated with dioxin, a by-product of PCB manufacturing, that the government ordered it evacuated. Dioxins are endocrine and immune system disruptors, cause congenital birth defects, reproductive and developmental problems, and increase the incidence of cancer, heart disease and diabetes in laboratory animals.

By the 1940s, Monsanto had begun focusing on plastics and synthetic fabrics like polystyrene (still widely used in food packaging and other consumer products), which is ranked fifth in the EPA’s 1980s listing of chemicals whose production generates the most total hazardous waste.

During World War II, Monsanto played a significant role in the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb.

Following the war, Monsanto championed the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture, and began manufacturing the herbicide 2,4,5-T, which contains dioxin. -* Monsanto has been accused of covering up or failing to report dioxin contamination in a wide range of its products.

The herbicide “Agent Orange,” used by U.S. military forces as a defoliant during the Vietnam War, was a mixture of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D and had very high concentrations of dioxin. U.S. Vietnam War veterans have suffered from a host of debilitating symptoms attributable to Agent Orange exposure, and since the end of the war an estimated 500,000 Vietnamese children have been born with deformities.

In the 1970s, Monsanto began manufacturing the herbicide Roundup, which has been marketed as a safe, general-purpose herbicide for widespread commercial and consumer use, even though its key ingredient, glyphosate, is a highly toxic poison for animals and humans. In 1997, The New York State Attorney General took Monsanto to court and Monsanto was subsequently forced to stop claiming that Roundup is “biodegradable” and “environmentally friendly.”

Monsanto has been repeatedly fined and ruled against for, among many things, mislabeling containers of Roundup, failing to report health data to EPA, and chemical spills and improper chemical deposition. In 1995, Monsanto ranked fifth among U.S. corporations in EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory, having discharged 37 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, land, water and underground.

Since the inception of Plan Colombia in 2000, the US has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in funding aerial sprayings of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicides in Colombia. The Roundup is often applied in concentrations 26 times higher than what is recommended for agricultural use. Additionally, it contains at least one surfactant, Cosmo-Flux 411f, whose ingredients are a trade secret, has never been approved for use in the US, and which quadruples the biological action of the herbicide.

Not surprisingly, numerous human health impacts have been recorded in the areas affected by the sprayings, including respiratory, gastrointestinal and skin problems, and even death, especially in children. Additionally, fish and animals will show up dead in the hours and days subsequent to the herbicide sprayings.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Monsanto was behind the aggressive promotion of synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone, approved by the FDA for commercial sale in 1994, despite strong concerns about its safety. Since then, Monsanto has sued small dairy companies that advertised their products as free of the artificial hormone, most recently bringing a lawsuit against Oakhurst Dairy in Maine.

In August, 2003, Monsanto and its former chemical subsidiary, Solutia, Inc. (now owned by Pharmacia Corp.), agreed to pay $600 million to settle claims brought by more than 20,000 residents of Anniston, AL, over the severe contamination of ground and water by tons of PCBs dumped in the area from the 1930s until the 1970s. Court documents revealed that Monsanto was aware of the contamination decades earlier.

Monsanto sucks in a lot of ways but the "tinkering with nature" hysteria is really tiresome. Most of the (non-GMO) plants and animals we eat have already been aberrations to "nature" for hundreds or thousands of years thanks to selective breeding.

Not only was it exposed that the U.S. is threatening nations who oppose Monsanto with military-style trade wars, but that many U.S. diplomats actually work directly for Monsanto.

In 2007 it was requested that specific nations inside the European Union be punished for not supporting the expansion of Monsanto's GMO crops. The request for such measures to be taken was made by Craig Stapleton, the United States ambassador to France and partner to George W. Bush. Despite mounting evidence linking Monsanto's GM corn to organ damage and environmental devastation, the ambassador plainly calls for 'target retaliation' against those not supporting the GM crop. In the leaked documents, Stapleton states:

"Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits. The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices."

Not that this is a totally reassuring thought, but if there was a food product introduced into the mainstream food supply -- one that, in fact, was found in almost EVERYTHING we eat -- and it caused organ failure, wouldn't you see a sudden and alarming rise in organ failure?

there was an essay i remember reading in one of those alt-collections from the 90s (i think) - either Apocalypse Culture or Amok Journal or something like that - about how the invention of agriculture ruined human society. does anyone else know of this?

Satisfying one's intellectual curiosity is a personal gratification. That is to say, it has selfish elements in it. When the average scientist is on the trail of an exciting new discovery, that feeling of excitement is very compelling. The idea that somewhere down the road this discovery may be put to horrific uses is unlikely to deter that scientist from going forward. The ability to live a life of intellectual excitement pursuing his field is strongly motivating to the average scientist. You cannot deny that.

As for global warming, that is a red herring. Argument by analogy where the analogy is weak.

yeah but you can't deny that scientists deliberately became scientists and enjoy science and - brace yrself - even paid to do science (some, though not as many as some think, may even find their jobs exciting. they get off on that excitement. they live for it. they come to need it. and eventually, they'll do anything for it.), so of course when you ask one of them about something they're gonna give you some science answer which of course we have no method of testing or verifying. you can't deny this.

To be clearer, the anti-global warming argument is that scientists are fabricating data in order to perpetuate their jobs in a bogus scientific field, and pretending a threat exists in order to add urgency to our need to employ them, so they can save us from this non-existant threat. And those who originated this argument and pay to propagate it clearly profit from the burning of fossil fuels.

By contrast, I am not arguing that anything the scientists are saying is bogus, but rather that the knowlege they are finding, the techniques they create and the claims they publish are all obviously otm. So, to say this is anti-science is incorrect. But just as chemistry PhDs work for chemical companies and mathematics PhDs now work for Wall Street banks, genetic engineers work for Monsanto and other agribusinesses.

The argument is not over whether the science is correct or the scientists are corrupting their data, but an entirely different argument over how to put this new knowlege into the world, and how to do it in such a way that unforeseen consequences are kept to a minimum. I say that profit-driven corporations are not trustworthy enough to make these decisions without oversight.

I say that balls equating this with the anti-global warming argument is superficial and tendentitous, and he is just skating on the thin ice of "lol anti-science" to make his analogy work. If he wants to get into it, let him develop his argument beyond "lol". Otherwise, I get to call bullshit.

The distinction of the scientific method is that it establishes factual knowlege, based on testable hypotheses, repeatable experiments with measurable results, full disclosure of findings, peer review and eventual consnsus among experts in the field. It works just fine, thank you. But scientists who work for Monsanto are not the ones who decide how Monsanto will profit from their work. Those decisions are made by marketers, lawyers, and managers.

Fuck it, if you all want to insist that I am frightened and confused when faced by omg genuine science then feel free. I've made my points. Misunderstand and distort them however you wish. I'm done clarifying. It's your sandbox now.

i will say that the one geneticist i know does work from time to time for monsanto and last year we were all 'how can you be a scientist and vote republican?'. boy has he been laughing it up the past few weeks. gmos are pretty heavy regulated (and the 'monsanto protection act' doesn't change this fwiw) but if you want to actually make an argument for more regulation feel fee, i'm down (feel free to be consistent in applying it to raw milk and homeopathy while you're at it). if you want to actually make an argument against monoculture or about reforming our intellectual property laws (there are even pro-science arguments to be made here though that might make some uncomfortable, the warm loving embrace of mother nature and all that), i'm down. but if you want to make an argument against agriculture that feeds more ppl and reduces negative enviromental impact though and your argument is 'someone somewhere will make money off it, possibly even lawyers' i'm gonna lol, esp if you cloud it w/ vague worry of 'unforseen consequences'. if the 'unforseen consequences' don't have anything to do w/ science (or professional self serving scientists w/ their lies and their extremely exciting lives) let me assure you that regulating gmos out of existence won't actually lead to the overthrow of capitalism. it won't even lead to the overthrow of big agriculture.

aimless tbf your concern appears to be rooted completely in your distrust of big ag; we can all sympathize, but the science isn't on your side. watch that video that was posted in the other thread, if you haven't. it's probably a good intro for well meaning enviros

My argument: when the public demands strong safeguards to regulate the introduction of genetically modified plants and animals into generalized use they are not being anti-science, but rather are recognizing the potential for abuses or harms which are inherent in the capitalist system. When they are sceptical of corporate-financed research into questions of safety, their scepticism is justified by past experience (see the pharmaceutical industry). When they perceive that the stakes are even greater with gmo organisms than with drugs, because food is grown under far less contained and controlled circumstances than the manufacture of drugs and food is consumed by everyone while drugs are consumed by only a fraction of the population, they have a rational point. When they are wary of the potential for industry capture of regulatory agencies producing weak or negligent oversight of industry, they are not imagining this potential. When they maintain a public clamor over these potential dangers, they are using the one political power they have to counteract the many institutional forces which tend to favor profit over safety. And when opponents say that all this amounts to luddite fear and ignorance, they are using scorn and ridicule in place of addressing the legitimacy of these concerns.

If any of those statements is the equivalent of saying gmo foods ought to be banned because omg frankenfood, then you can kick me in the crotch. If you would like to argue against the rationality of any of these, then quote it directly and state why it is misguided or wrong.

There is still no explanation provided by the authorities as to the cause of death of Gloeckner’s cows. The biotech industry claims that Bt toxins are quickly digested in the stomach and are only effective in insect target species. However, a recent study has found the toxin in the blood of over 80 % of women and their unborn children tested in Canada [5]. Because naturally existing Bt toxins from the soil bacterium have been used for a long time, long-term toxicology and health risk assessments on Bt proteins in GM crops were not done. However, there are important differences between the naturally produced toxins that can be washed off the crops, as opposed to genetically modified toxins that are part and parcel of the GM crop. Independent studies have shown that basing health assessments on flawed scientific assumptions is not only arrogant, but foolish.

ok i read that paper. the authors essentially say that the evidence monsanto provided to regulators is really flawed, due either to low standards required by regulating bodies or by deliberately misleading research methods employed by the investigators. to be honest i'm not familiar with the statistical methods they used to interpret the data they were given (methods they had to use since the sample sizes were so small), but their conclusion essentially is that the results are troubling; they call for additional research with longer follow-up, and they m/l echo that nature editorial by saying the research should be more independent. i agree w/ that, and monsanto is awful. the evidence that GM food is harmful is still very weak, though

I agree with you, but this paper suggests that the only reason why that is so is probably because no one has yet done the research. and while the minimal research that has been done is far from definitive, it is already far from encouraging -- the only mammals which were tested before market were rats, which developed kidney & liver problems within 3-5 months -- not long enough to prove causation, but that's been the extent of the testing. there's that, and there's the Bt toxins showing up in blood tests instead of being filtered by our livers as advertised: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1388888/GM-food-toxins-blood-93-unborn-babies.html

there was no popular vote to allow this into 87% of our corn supply, and therefore most of what we use to feed our animal livestock, which we then eat. when it comes to the wisdom of splicing a protein that causes an insect's stomach to explode into our own food chain, I would think the burden of proof would be on those arguing for, not those against -- and what this paper is telling us is that the burden has really not been met

I understand why some have become allergic to anti-GMO activism, especially now that it's reached peak level facebook .jpg dissemination, and I'm pro-GMO research in the abstract. I've certainly got more to read about this, and I appreciate the conversation.

Harking back to my points made upthread, if a corporation holds a patent on a GMO, it is in the interest of that corporation to protect that patent from anything which may tend to lessen its eventual profitability. Hence, if a corporation is required to provide studies and data upon the safety of introducing a GMO into the general environment, it is in the interests of that corporation to provide the very least data acceptable to regulators and to present it in the most favorable possible light.

A market-oriented conservative might argue that the true interest of the corporation is to do due diligence and avoid the liability of introducing a harmful product, but this overlooks the obvious fact that few of their customers will have the financial means or the sophistication to supplement the corporation's original faulty research with better research of greater depth and breadth, and that most government regulatory agencies or research universities can be co-opted through political influence or money. Therefore, if the product makes big profits, those same profits can be used to subvert the system and protect the corporation from liability.

Some critics have emphasized that no adverse effects have been reported on either farm animals or in the human population of the USA who have consumed an unknown mixture GMO crop derived food. Such claims are scientifically unsound for the following reasons. First, it is important to note that there have been neither epidemiological studies of the human population nor monitoring of farm animals in an attempt to correlate any ill-health observed with the consumption of a given GM crop. Second, it should be recalled that farm animals are not reared to live for the entire duration of their natural lifespan, and thus usually do not live long enough to develop long-term chronic diseases, which contrasts with the rats in our life-long experiment. If any studies in lactating cows are conducted, biological analyses performed are far less complete than those done in regulatory tests using rodents including in our study. Third, as there is no labeling of GMO food and feed in the USA, the amount consumed is unknown, and no “control group” exists. Thus, without a clear traceability or labeling, no epidemiological survey can be performed.

This is from Séralini's 'Answers to critics: Why there is a long term toxicity due to a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize and to a Roundup herbicide'

Wheat in Chicago fell, headed for the biggest monthly loss since February, after Japan suspended imports from the U.S., where the government discovered an unapproved, genetically modified strain growing in an Oregon field.

Japan, the biggest buyer of U.S. wheat behind Mexico, suspended imports of western-white wheat and feed wheat from the U.S., said Hiromi Iwahama, the director for grain trade and operation at the agriculture ministry. Scientists said the rogue wheat in Oregon was a strain tested from 1998 to 2005 by Monsanto Co. (MON), the world’s top seedmaker. Japan also canceled a purchase of 24,926 metric tons of white wheat.

wait really? googling it there's much noise on this subject but everyone's source seems to be this three-year-old scahill article about monsanto being one of blackwater's clients. it's got this hilariously scary bit

One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the "intel arm" of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.

which i hadn't known (although note "sought to"), but it doesn't say monsanto bought the company. the two highest results for "monsanto blackwater" are articles called, respectively, "Yes, Monsanto Actually DID Buy the BLACKWATER Mercenary Group!" and "No, Monsanto actually DIDN'T buy Blackwater." the former does not fill me w confidence:

Xe (now Academi) has, indeed, been purchased, and while there’s no way of DOCUMENTING who the new owners really are, the logical conclusion would be that Monsanto, who had been employing them prior to the sale are the new owners.

idk if that's the logical conclusion. still, plenty to get high and contemplate for doomy thrills in biotech giants buddying up to mercenary crusader giants even without outright purchase.